An aerial view shows the Lieberose solar farm, which became the world's second biggest solar power plant and Germany's biggest. Photo: Reuters

AN ARCHITECT of Germany's rapid growth in clean energy - it has nearly half the world's rooftop solar power - has warned that Australia's climate policies will not alone drive a switch to greenhouse-gas-free electricity.

Germany reached its 2020 target of generating a fifth of its electricity from renewable sources nine years ahead of schedule, largely through feed-in tariffs that guarantee new power forms an inflated rate for the power they use to make them competitive.

It installed 3 gigawatts of solar photovoltaic panels in December alone - roughly enough for 1.5 million homes. Australia has less than half this in total.

Hans-Josef Fell, an author of the German Renewable Energies Act introduced in 2000 and a Greens MP, backed the Australian carbon price as a positive step that would start to factor in the cost of burning fossil fuels to the climate and people's health. But he said the experience of the European emissions trading scheme suggested Australia's laws alone would not trigger the uptake of clean energy.

Speaking in Melbourne, he said feed-in tariffs were needed to help solar, wind, biomass and geothermal power overcome barriers that made them more expensive than fossil fuel energy. He cited International Energy Agency data that found global subsidies for fossil fuel energy increased to $US409 billion in 2010 ($A380 billion), compared with $US64 billion for renewable energy.

''In the beginning, all new technologies are more expensive than existing technologies, so we must help them,'' Mr Fell said. ''We must make money available for renewables and lower the tax subsidies for fossil fuels and nuclear power.''

The Australian laws - dubbed the ''clean energy future package'' by the government - include a carbon price of $23 a tonne charged to about 500 big emitting companies. It starts in July and will evolve into an emissions trading scheme in 2015. The package also includes a $10 billion Clean Energy Finance Corporation to invest in and underwrite the development of fledgling technologies. But the government opposes feed-in tariffs and is reducing a national solar incentive scheme. State solar feed-in tariffs have been wound back.

In Germany there is a debate over how quickly to reduce its solar tariff given the cost of panels is falling rapidly. It installed 7.5 gigawatts last year.

Renewable energy increased German power prices by about 10 per cent. Mr Fell said analyses showed the rise would have been greater without investment in clean sources.

Hans-Josef Fell speaks at BMW Edge, Federation Square, at 3pm today as part of the Sustainable Living Festival.

Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/national/german-experience-clean-energy-requires-subsidies-20120217-1teju.html#ixzz1mmxVvSA1

You've gone all very pro-German all of a sudden.

Have you discovered German porn or something???

Andrei.Hicks wrote on Feb 19^th, 2012 at 12:16pm:



Nail has discovered that the Germans are doing well with renewable energy
& in manufacturing & he wants us to copy them.

What is wrong with that?

Bobby. wrote on Feb 19^th, 2012 at 12:21pm:


notice how aussies always find lame excuses not to do anything when it comes to technology. But lets pay lots of wordsmiths megabucks to come up with absolutely nothing

That's just fiddling around the edges.

We've been through the energy saver light bulb replacement phase

Quote:


Building a solar plant does not actually reduce your GHG emissions unless you stop producing power elsewhere. This does not happen when you subsidise the electricity industry.

Putting  price on GHG emissions can achieve anywhere between a 0% and 100% reduction in GHG emissions in any time frame you want. It will do this far cheaper than subsidising renewables and will also achieve renewable energy investment - but only when the cheaper options have been exhausted.

Regardless of what rate of change you want, going with the more expensive options before the cheap ones is a bad idea and will slow you down in the long run.

Quote:


You have no concept of the huge potential of emissions reductions via reducing consumption. Light bulbs were fiddling around the eges, but this is far bigger.

Building a solar plant does not actually reduce your GHG emissions unless you stop producing power elsewhere. This does not happen when you subsidise the electricity industry.

You can only improve energy efficiency so much which offers no insurance against an ever rising population base. What you are suggesting is just a temporary measure not a solution to the ever growing energy needs of an expanding world population. Only cleaning up emissions at the source using clean is the best long term solution and the Germans have already worked this out.